The Tequila Worm Read online

  “Berta, I’m your godmother too, right?”

  “Yes, Tía.”

  “Well, I want you to help Sofia with her goal of going to that school.”

  Silence.

  “Berta, Sofia needs you. She needs you to be her very first comadre.”

  “Ay, Tía, . . . but . . .”

  “But what, mi’ja?”

  “I don’t know if I want Sofia to go. It’s so far away.”

  “But it’ll be good training for both of you. It’ll teach you how to stay connected from afar. And when you get good at this, it’ll be easier for you to learn to stay comadres with the dead.”

  “With the dead? Tía, you’re joking, right?”

  “No, Berta. Being a comadre is never a joke. This is why you must always choose them carefully. A true comadre is forever.”

  Silence.

  “So will you be Sofia’s first one?”

  “But what do I have to do?”

  “Support her dreams, that’s all. And hers is to go to that school.”

  “But what if it’s a big mistake?”

  “It’s still her dream. She’ll figure that out herself. And if it’s a mistake, it’s her mistake, and she’ll have to learn from that. Won’t you, Sofia?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But remember, Sofia, a comadre is always free to tell you what she thinks, like it or not.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yes, I think this will be very good training for both of you. So, Berta, will you do it?”

  “Well, I guess so . . . yes.”

  “And you, Sofia, will you be Berta’s first comadre, too?”

  “Yes, of course, but I don’t know what her dream is. . . .”

  Tía Petra laughed. “Oh, Bertita will have too many along her way. Just wait and see. That’s the secret behind those great teeth of hers. She’ll always be biting off more than she can chew.”

  I laughed, and eventually Berta did too. We kissed Tía Petra goodnight.

  When we joined Papa, Mama, and Lucy in Papa’s old Ford, Berta said, “Sofia, I’m . . . so, so . . . excited for you, really.” They stared at Berta.

  “Eh . . . thanks, Berta,” I said, smiling. “Yes, thank you very much.”

  As we drove home that night and I stared out at the passing darkness, I felt I had never loved Berta more.

  CLeaninG BeanS

  EVERY Tuesday Papa would come home from the cabinet shop where he worked, change into his jeans and boots, and then take the yellow metal container from the kitchen cabinet. He would sit at the kitchen table, take the lid off, and start cleaning his pound of pinto beans. I would always join him.

  It was a Tuesday, and I now only had a couple of weeks to decide whether to accept the scholarship. As I sat down beside Papa and watched him clean his pinto beans, I wondered what it would take to finally convince my family to let me go. Tía Petra’s plastic performance and Berta’s support had surely helped my cause, but I still hadn’t gotten the blessing from my parents.

  Papa dipped his left hand into the metal container and fished out a fistful of beans. He raised his hand to his chest and opened it. Using his index finger, he began looking through his little mountain, a gentle giant. As he pulled out pebbles, clumps of dirt, and broken beans, he put them in the upturned lid. He also kept blowing on them as he poured them from hand to hand like jewels. This helped clean off the dirt.

  After turning and moving all the beans around, making sure they were now clean and none were broken— broken ones only got stuck to the side of the pot and burned—he slowly spilled his handful into a big brown clay bowl.

  That was how he cleaned his pound of pinto beans every Tuesday—handful by handful. He said that holding and cleaning them relaxed him, made every single one meaningful—sacred, even.

  I loved sitting and cleaning beans with Papa. He told me secrets about beans, how they were better than meat, how they were like us, mestizo—the pale part Spanish and the brown spots pure Indian.

  He’d often pick up a single one, squint at it, and ask me whether I saw the image of Pancho Villa in the scattering of the Indian spots, or Zapata, or the Mexican comic Cantinflas, or my Tía Petra or this or that. I always looked but never saw anything. Still, I said that I did. It was better than watching stars, he’d say. Watching beans was a lot like watching a Mexican channel on TV—only Mexican things came out.

  But usually we cleaned in total silence. And that was when I felt especially close to Papa. He was the only person I knew who made me feel I could be perfectly quiet and still enjoy something really warm and special with someone.

  After the bowl was half full, Papa filled it with fresh water and started moving the beans around and around with his long, golden-brown fingers. He liked the sound, like the waves at Padre Island.

  When the water turned gray, Papa drained it all off and washed the beans again, until the water stayed completely clear. Then he poured the beans into the big clay pot. The pot was brown, with a red rooster on its belly. This was Papa’s only prized possession, and it was solely used for cooking beans. It was the only pan or pot that had its own space in the kitchen—on the right back burner of our old gas stove.

  He then poured in fresh water, put the pot back on the stove, and lit the burner. He watched it until the water started boiling.

  After exactly two minutes, he turned the burner off, picked up his old guitar, and came and sat beside me. While we waited for a whole hour to pass, Papa taught me some new chords on the guitar, and we listened to Coco, Papa’s yellow canary, singing outside. This hour, he said, cleaned the beans of their wind-making powers, which always made me laugh.

  Then Papa rinsed the beans once more.

  Now it was time to cook. Papa poured in fresh water, added a sprig of epazote, a green plant that awakened the true taste (another bean secret), and lit the fire under the pot.

  Once the pot started to simmer and bubble, Papa started bubbling too. The smell was the earth’s incense, he said as he took a deep whiff. He then started his bean dance, continuously prancing up to the bubbling pot, lifting its lid, and peeking inside.

  Later, he spooned two beans out of the pot and pressed each between his fingers, testing them. “These are better than any piece of meat or steak.”

  Once the beans were perfect, Papa spooned a cup for me and one for him, and we sat quietly at the kitchen table enjoying them, one by little one, using tiny spoons. This was when beans tasted best, we both agreed, when they were whole and still hot from just being cleaned and cooked.

  Now the front door slammed and in burst Mama and Lucy. Lucy was sucking noisily on an enormous lollipop, the colors of a rainbow. Mama dumped two big grocery bags on the kitchen table and flipped the radio on.

  “Ay!” She cranked up the radio. “It’s like a funeral parlor in here. You two should go outside and do something, anything. How you two can just sit there for hours without saying a single word. . . . And Sofia, you should be more like Berta. We saw her out shopping for stockings. She’s already planning her quinceañera.”

  “Julia,” the vals sung by Javier Solis, started to play. “Ay! That’s our song, viejo!” Mama said as she pulled Papa out of his chair.

  Lucy and I stared. I hadn’t realized Papa could dance. He was waltzing Mama around the kitchen, beaming at her. Mama was laughing, her head back, her hair flowing. They looked like teenagers.

  When the vals ended, Mama planted a big smack on Papa’s lips. This made him turn bright red. He laughed, took Mama’s right hand, and kissed it gently. “Gracias, mi amor. It’s an honor to dance with such a beautiful woman.”

  “Girls, that was our wedding song,” Mama said as she emptied the bags. We all started to help. She took out a bottle of cooking oil, a white onion, two serrano chilies, and her big cast-iron skillet.

  After she diced the onion and the chilies, she put the skillet on the stove and poured a stream of oil into it. “It’s a complete mystery to me how you two can eat those beans
right out of the pot. As far as I’m concerned, they’re not even cooked yet. You need to transform them into refried beans.” Mama tossed the onion and chilies into the hot oil.

  Papa and I watched as she scooped cup after cup of beans from the pot, poured them into the sizzling skillet, and mashed them with her big green-handled wire masher. “This is dinner tonight,” she said, and began to make flour tortillas, using the masa she’d made early that morning.

  Mama left Papa and me in charge of cooking dinner. Papa picked up the pot and showed me that not one of our beans had survived. They were bubbling away in Mama’s skillet. “Next time, Sofia, we’ll be smart and save a secret portion just for us. But we need to be quick, before your mama gets to them.”

  I laughed. One of the flour tortillas started blowing up like a giant bullfrog. “Flip it,” Papa said, smiling.

  I grabbed the edge, but it was way too hot. Papa reached over my shoulder and flipped it. “Be careful, mi’ja. Try using a fork.”

  “But you and Mama use your fingers.”

  “Ah, but that’s because we have a lot of experience. You’re just starting out.”

  I laughed. “That sounds a lot like learning to become a good comadre.

  “Papa, there are only a couple of weeks left. They’ll give the scholarship to someone else if I don’t accept it.”

  “Ah,” Papa said as he lowered the flame under the bubbling skillet. “So tell me, Sofia, what’s the difference between how we like to eat our pinto beans and your mama’s?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. We like them whole, eaten from a cup, whereas Mama likes to smash them, fry them, and then trap them into tacos.”

  Papa laughed. “What? You don’t like your mama’s tacos?”

  “Yes, I do. But they once got me called Taco Head at school.”

  “Taco Head?”

  I told him the story.

  “That must’ve been hard for you, mi’ja. But don’t tell your mama, because she’ll grab her machete and go after that big girl.”

  “It happened years ago.”

  “Oh that’s a mere detail when it comes to your mama. Your mama’s a huracán, a force of nature. You’ve seen her use her powerful solar system of comadres.”

  “Yes . . . but I’m nothing like her.”

  “No, you’re like your papa. But don’t feel bad. We have our own secret powers. We find God among the pots and pans, just like Teresa of Ávila, our little Spanish saint.”

  “Pots and pans?”

  “Do you remember those fireflies years ago? How we caught a bunch of them and squashed them all over our faces, arms, and necks? Your mama said, ‘How could you get so dirty? And those poor creatures!’

  “But then we stepped outside into the dark night, remember? How amazed and enchanted she was then, for there we were, glowing like some supernatural beings.”

  “Yes . . . but . . .”

  “And take your Taco Head story too, the one you just told me. It must’ve been really, really hard for you. But look where it’s taken you. It kicked you to the very top of your class, and now you have this scholarship.”

  “Papa, do you want me to go? Can I go?”

  “I want you to be happy, mi’ja, to learn what it takes to always have the ability to make yourself happy.”

  “This will make me happy.”

  Papa looked down at his brown and white boots and then at me. “Okay, Sofia. And know that I want you to always follow your dreams. You’re a dreamer, like me. And I see from your Taco Head story that you have the kick it takes to learn from life, to keep on going, even when it gets hard.”

  I kissed Papa. He smiled.

  “But what about Mama, and Lucy?” I said, flipping a blown-up tortilla with a fork.

  Papa started laughing. “To your mama, the beans aren’t done until they’re refried. And Lucy is a mini version of her.” Papa turned off the burner.

  “That’s another important lesson of learning to be happy, Sofia, of becoming a good comadre—realizing that everyone is special and often quite different from you. And that if you really want to connect with them, to love them, you need to first figure out how they feel. Take me, for instance. I had to learn to dance, something I had no interest in, just to have a chance at getting to know your mama. And that’s because she loved dancing and dances and everything to do with them.”

  “But . . .”

  “But you’re all confused now. Well, that’s good too!”

  “Good?”

  “Yes, good, Sofia, because life is like that—confusing. And it’s confusing because people are confusing. But basta! with all this talk from another world, as you like to say.

  “Sofia, seriously, as your papa, let me say this: if this is your dream, to go to this school, I’ll support you. Now, on the other hand, you still need to convince your mama. As for Lucy, she’ll go along with your mama.”

  “But how?”

  “By learning to dance, just like I did.”

  “Are you serious? Papa, that’s . . .”

  Papa started laughing again as he took the last tortilla off the griddle and put it inside the ceramic tortilla holder. “You have to connect with her in a way she can feel and understand, in a way that takes care of her, too. That’s what I mean when I say you need to learn to dance. Your mama is a dancer, not a dreamer like you and me. She needs to see and hear things; she can’t sense things in silence, like we can.

  “Let me give you an example. Remember that Sunday years ago when you panicked and put the host in your shirt pocket, and how your mama called the priest?”

  “Yes,” I said. Such a strange memory!

  “Well, your mama came into the kitchen carrying your shirt and told me what was in the pocket. I laughed and told her not to worry, that I would simply tell you a magic story about how we could now use your secret host to keep angels hovering all over the house.”

  “Angels?”

  “Yes. You know how they tell you that a whole horde of heavenly angels come down right when the priest starts transforming the host into Jesus’s body. And how they fly around all during Communion, making sure not one single host gets lost along the way.

  “The way I saw it, if we kept your little host in your pocket, then we’d automatically have all these angels hovering over our house. I told your mama that this story would make you feel better, and fast.

  “But I sensed that she really felt she had to call the priest. And I knew that this would work out for you, too.

  “It must’ve been scary for you to have to go talk to the priest, but if I hadn’t agreed to calling him, your mama would still be panic-stricken about having a now-moldy holy host in the closet.

  “Sofia, do you see what I’m saying?”

  “But what can I possibly do or say to take care of her so she won’t mind me going away?”

  “Well, try this: tell her you love her, and that you can take care of yourself.”

  “But she knows I love her. . . .”

  “Sofia, like I said, she’s not like us. She only feels what she sees and hears and—”

  Mama stomped into the kitchen. “Carmen called to tell me about the great new movie playing at the drive-in, one with Pedro Infante. I’m so excited!”

  As Mama took over the kitchen, Papa winked at me. I followed him outside. There was a beautiful orange glow on the horizon. The evening air was sweet with Papa’s Mexican jasmine.

  “As I was saying, she only feels what she sees and hears, and what she experiences in the movies.” He then started to laugh. “So when we go to the drive-in, pay attention to your mama and to how she connects to the movie.”

  I rolled my eyes. No, not another one of those singing charro movies.

  “So I guess it’s time you learn to dance, mi’ja.” Papa said, smiling. He started whistling the vals “Julia.” He then took me in his arms and began waltzing me around and around the freshly cut grass.

  The DRiVe-in

  IT had been years since I’d been to the
Border drive-in theater. According to Mama and Berta, I’d been so focused on my books that I had missed some of the best movies ever.

  Lucy was sitting between Berta and me in the backseat of our old white Ford, while Noe sat between Papa and Mama in front. As the car passed the marquee, I tapped Berta on the shoulder and pointed. We laughed, for most of the black letters spelling PEDRO INFANTE were either falling off or missing completely.

  After Papa parked on top of one of the rows and rows of asphalt mounds, it was just like always: Mama leaned over and moved Saint Christopher and the Virgin from the center to the right side of the dashboard. She opened the glove compartment, pulled out a snakelike green coil, set it on top of the dashboard, and lit it. This was incense for killing the flying bugs and mosquitoes. The coil burned with a strange glow that got redder and redder as the evening got darker.

  “Mama,” said Lucy, “can you please take Saint Christopher and the Virgin off the dashboard? They’re blocking my view.”

  “Ay, Lucy, it’s always the same thing with you. The movie hasn’t even started. And anyway, I’m not taking them off. They’re there to sanctify our car and protect us against accidents.”

  “Mama, the car’s parked. It’s not moving,” Lucy said. Berta and I grinned at each other.

  “Well, you never know. Something could always happen. Look, I’ll move them all the way to the right.” Mama carefully set them on the corner of the dashboard.

  “Aren’t you going to turn them around so they can watch the movie?” I winked at Berta.

  Mama turned her two santos to face the huge white screen as she always did, and we laughed. I leaned over to Berta and whispered, “I can’t wait for the kissing, the tequila drinking, and the shooting to begin. Wonder what Mama’s santos will think then!” But Berta didn’t laugh.

  Then Lucy and Noe fought over who got to take the metal speaker that hung on a pole outside and attach it to their window. Berta and I looked at each other: once we had been the ones fighting over this. Mama grabbed the speaker, hung it over the top of her window, and turned the knobs.

  A man’s voice burst forth: “Fresh popcorn, cold Cokes, hot dogs, chocolate bars, and pepperoni pizzas are waiting for you at the concession stand!” I used to love going to the concession stand, for there were four magic horses next to it. The horses flew on swings back and forth, back and forth, making me feel as though I were flying through the stars.